'''Günter Grass''' (Danzig 1927) [[German]] [[writer]], [[poet]], [[sculptor]], [[printmaker]] and former member of the [[Schutzstaffel|Waffen-SS]] <ref> [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/12/wss12.xml I was in Hitler's SS, admits Günter Grass]</ref>. In 1999 he was awarded the [[Nobel Prize]] in Literature. The same year he received the Prize "Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras".

'''Günter Grass''' (Danzig 1927) [[German]] [[writer]], [[poet]], [[sculptor]], [[printmaker]] and former member of the [[Schutzstaffel|Waffen-SS]] <ref> [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/12/wss12.xml I was in Hitler's SS, admits Günter Grass]</ref>. In 1999 he was awarded the [[Nobel Prize]] in Literature. The same year he received the Prize "Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras".

Contents

Books

His works includes 25 books. His first novel was The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel), 1959. Other works followed, including Cat and Mouse, Dog Days, From the Diary of a Snail, The Flounder and The Rat [2]; recently works are: Mein Jahrhundert, 1999, Im Krebsgang, 2002 and Peeling the Onion, 2007. In his "German tragedy" The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising, and published political speeches and essays, he advocated a Germany free from fanaticism and totalitarian ideologies... Vehement debate and criticism were aroused by his mammoth novel Ein weites Feld which is set in the DDR in the years of the collapse of communism and the fall of the Berlin wall. [3]

The Günter Grass House in Lübeck shows exhibitions of his artworks, and houses an archive and a library.

Politics

Politically, Grass is linked to German Social-Democratic Party and supported Willy Brandt. Günter Grass’s memoir was published last summer (2007) in Germany to a chorus of controversy over the author’s service in the Waffen SS. But now that people have read it, most of the criticism has stopped. [4]

"You can begin a story in the middle and create confusion by striking out boldly, backward and forward. You can be modern, put aside all mention of time and distance and, when the whole thing is done, proclaim, or let someone else proclaim, that you have finally, at the last moment, solved the space-time problem. Or you can declare at the very start that it's impossible to write a novel nowadays, but then, behind your own back so to speak, give birth to a whopper, a novel to end all novels." (from The Tin Drum)

“

We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place.

”

Grass was critized by israelian politicans, for his poem “What must be said”. Grass said that Israel is the greatest impediment to world peace and plans to “extinguish the Iranian people”.[5]